Unknown Hero
by CrystalMaiden77
Summary: Metal Sonic is on his way home from a mission when he encounters someone in grave danger, and makes a shocking decision.


" Finally, that's done… " Metal Sonic muttered under his breath, as the robot was flying through a forest with his jet engine chest on the way home from his previous mission. He had recently gone through an entire military base under Eggman's orders and deleted from their database some of the intelligence they had gathered on his boss, flying past soldiers, bullets, lasers and security gates with relative ease. Flying at the speed of sound, he had no problem with keeping himself from getting damaged during the mission, but the sheer fact that he was in a dangerous situation stressed him out nevertheless. He never assumed that he would survive a mission unscathed. He never got his hopes up, because every time something good happened to him, something bad was just waiting around the corner. Even though he succeeded in every mission he was sent on that didn't involve his organic counterpart, he never became reckless from assuming that things would work out for him, always remaining careful, cautious, and alert. He wasn't a naïve weak-old robot anymore. After the kind of life he had as a slave to a megalomaniacal mad scientist, he had no reason to be optimistic. All he had to look forward to now was coming home and going to his room to catch up on his reading, using an encyclopedia to try to distract himself from the problems of his life.

He was only eighteen miles from the cave with the secret elevator leading to Eggman's underground main base when he heard the sound of a little girl screaming, " Help! " and turned in the direction of the sound in alarm and curiosity. He saw a brown-haired little girl with a pink jacket, white shirt and red skirt backing away from one of Eggman's giant white mechas, which was about to electrocute her with its electrified claw.

Metal Sonic gasped, and his red eyes shrunk to the size of tiny dots as they fixated on the crackling electricity, overwhelmed with fear, giving him flashbacks to when he had slammed into an electrified wall five years ago on the Death Egg Mk II. The memory of being caused that amount of excruciating pain after he lost to Sonic coming back to haunt him caused him to become overwhelmed with panic, which was shortly replaced with a strong determination to prevent something like that from happening to anyone else. Even though he knew that he'd get in trouble with Eggman if he found out that he destroyed his mecha, and he was certain he'd get no appreciation for rescuing that little girl, he was so fixated on neutralizing the threat that he didn't care.

He instantly turned on his boost to make himself wreathed in flames, flew towards the mecha at Mach 4 and curled up into a ball in the process, spinning in place while flying towards it at four times the speed of sound. In an instant, he went from standing on the ground to flying through the mecha in an orange blur multiple times in a row, cutting through every part of it with the five sharp spines on the back of his head as he rammed through it in ball form, with smashing sounds and the sound of a jet engine being all that was heard for miles as the machine was quickly destroyed within seconds. Before the little girl knew it, the mecha was a pile of scrap metal on the ground in front of her, with the formerly electrified claw of it being completely destroyed. " Huh? " It soon registered in her mind that someone had saved her life. But before she had the chance to see who it was and show her gratitude, her mysterious savior left the instant the mecha was destroyed, turning from an orange blur to a dark blue one as he flew away, with the sound of his jet engine fading away into the distance.

It was hardly new for him. It wasn't the first time Metal Sonic had decided to use his powers for good, and it wouldn't be the last. By now, he was well aware of how things usually went after he did something like that. He had always had an infamous reputation as Dr. Robotnik's most powerful robot, the supposed evil knockoff of the world's greatest hero. No one outside of home base truly understood who he was. No one understood that he wasn't as evil as everyone thought, because the world was convinced that he was nothing but a mindless killing machine. The one time he got to show off his personality in a public manner, it was while he was having a mental breakdown and was acting completely differently from his true self. It was because of that hatred, that fear, that infamous reputation, that he had never once been thanked by a civilian for helping them. All of his help was responded to with suspicion and wariness at best, and with the civilian screaming for the police at worst. It was because of this that the robot had gotten into the habit of leaving instantly after helping a civilian, because he had no reason to expect any gratitude. Children tended to respond well to his help, thinking that he was cool and not always recognizing him, but he always left before they could say a word to him.

He wasn't sure why he felt the urge to help random strangers when it wasn't too inconvenient for him. He didn't know them, so logically he shouldn't have felt any emotional attachment to him, and not cared what happened to them, and just saved his energy instead of wasting it on helping them for nothing in return, but that wasn't how he was. As much as he wanted to be a purely logical-minded robot who was above helping people, something in him always urged him to use his abilities to accomplish good things and make a positive impact on the world whenever he could. As a result, whenever it wasn't too inconvenient for him, he would help people with his abilities, leaving instantly after doing so.

As he flew through the woods at the speed of sound on his way back to home base, he felt a familiar mixture of satisfaction and embarrassment at what he had just done, torn between his soft side and his strong side. Part of him still had the personality he had when he was first built, the cheerful, carefree, compassionate and cocky personality that was heavily based off his organic counterpart, which had developed into the closest he had to a conscience. Even long after he had started defying his programming by acting exactly the opposite of how he was programmed to act, he still had a soft side. Even after he had developed a completely different personality that was exactly the opposite of the one he once had from the experiences of his life, the old him still remained, urging him to help people despite the lack of gratitude he would get. Despite the fact that he was specifically programmed not to care about ethics and morals and doing good for the sake of doing good, the compassion that still remained in him continued to compel him to be generous anyways, even if it made him look weak. There would always be a part of him that would desire to make a positive impact on the world, no matter how much he tried to hide it.


End file.
